The Story of a Strong Woman in a Patriarchal Country: Nell Freudenberger's The Newlyweds

With summer vacations, languorous days on the beach, and relaxing days on patios and porches come extended summer reading days, so strong, solid books are at the top of my my mind, and many of yours, too. I've got one for you to push to the head of your queue--and you'll realize quickly why I use the word "strong" to describe it.

With summer vacations, languorous days on the beach, and relaxing days on patios and porches come extended summer reading days, so strong, solid books are at the top of my my mind, and many of yours, too. I've got one for you to push to the head of your queue--and you'll realize quickly why I use the word "strong" to describe it.

The Newlyweds by Nell Freudenberger is the story of Aminda Mazid, a 24-year-old from Bangladesh who moves to Rochester, N.Y. to marry a man she met online for love. She's never left her home country, and only met her financé, George, once--but to those around her, the fact that the marriage is unarranged is the oddest part. The story follows her assimilation into American culture, and her struggles with establishing her new home, culturally, religiously, psychologically, and even sexually.

Quite simply--the narrative is beautiful, ladies. The commentary on women in modern society, as well as their place overseas will jolt you into thinking about gender roles, and the constant tension in discussions about marriage, both arranged and for love, is provocative, especially as you keep the theme of women's progress in your mind.

Most importantly, Freudenberger's narrative is also a discovery for her main character, Amina, of her own strength. Turns out that the long process of writing *The Newlyweds *was one of evolution for the author, a busy mother and strong woman herself.

__GLAMOUR:__Why did you choose Bangladesh as the backdrop for The Newlyweds? What women's issues political and social issues within the country are of particular interest to you?

__NELL FREUDENBERGER:__I chose Bangladesh because of a woman I met on an airplane. This was in 2005, and she had just moved from Dhaka to upstate New York to marry a man she'd met on the internet. She'd wanted to come to America since she was a little girl, and she'd finally found a way to manage it; that aspect of her character, rather than any political or social interest in Bangladesh, was what made me want to write the novel.

__GLAMOUR:__What was your research like for The Newlyweds? What challenges did you come up against researching the book in a traditionally patriarchal country?

__NELL FREUDENBERGER:__I read a lot, of course, both fiction and nonfiction—I was especially inspired by Betsy Hartmann's and James Boyce's account of the year they spent in a Bangladeshi village: A Quiet Violence. In 2007 I went with my friend Farah and her American husband to visit her parents in Dhaka, and then to meet her extended family in a village just outside the Sundarbans—the southern, estuarine portion of Bangladesh. At that time Farah's parents were strategizing about how to come to America to join their daughter, and they were interested in meeting one of her American friends.

Research for fiction is a funny thing: you go looking for one piece of information, and find something altogether different. I spent three weeks in Bangladesh and took copious notes, but I found that when I was writing, I rarely looked my journal. Some things that interested or moved me never found their way into the book; for example, Farah's mother turned to me on the long bus ride south to the village and asked: "Is there rice in America?" I was struck by how little she knew about the place where she was planning to live the rest of her life, and how sure she was that she wanted to go there—simply in order to be with her only child.

It would be hard to find a country that wasn't traditionally patriarchal in which to set a novel. But there were certainly some challenges that had to be overcome before I could start writing. I'm not a Muslim, nor do I speak Bengali, and so I had to approach the story as a student of my friend's life. It was almost as if I were researching a biography but writing a novel; I spent five years interviewing Farah over email, phone and in-person, and at the same time I was imagining a woman with a similar background, whose story departed from hers in significant ways. I was very fortunate that Farah not only gave me permission to write the book, but opened up to me so generously about her past. Without that gift I would never have taken on this project.

Advertisement

__GLAMOUR:__When you're developing a female character, what do you find most challenging about sculpting her identity? Do you find the same challenges when crafting a male character?

__NELL FREUDENBERGER:__It's usually easier for me to begin writing in a character's voice if that person is different from me in some significant way. That's part of why I chose to tell this story in the voice of a young Bangladeshi woman, and why my last book had a male Chinese narrator. Of course no matter how different a character is from the writer on the surface, he or she is always grounded in that writer's psyche—it's like Flaubert said, "Madame Bovary is me." But I think I need to pretend that I'm not writing about myself at all in order to get going; if I thought I was writing about myself in disguise, I'm afraid I'd be tempted to manipulate the truth, to make things a little rosier than they ought to be. By writing about characters who start off seeming very foreign to my experience, I basically trick myself into being honest.

__GLAMOUR:__Was writing Amina, who is particularly complex as she has to navigate so many different cultural standards and allegiances, the most difficult character you've had to write?

__NELL FREUDENBERGER:__She was the most difficult—not so much because of who she is but because I've never written a whole novel from one character's point of view. I had to know her better than I've ever known a character before, and so she became more real to me than anyone I've written about previously.

__GLAMOUR:__Amina meets George, her husband, online. How has internet dating changed women's empowerment? Has it altered the concept of feminism on the whole?

__NELL FREUDENBERGER:__Well, the site Amina and George use is a bit different from dating sites I expect you or your readers might use, since it's explicitly designed to connect people from different parts of the world. In one sense it empowers Amina, since her knowledge of English and ability to use the computer allows her to manipulate the tradition of arranged marriage; she winds up arranging for herself a very different type of marriage than anyone in her family has ever had. On the other hand, there's a difference of power built into the architecture of the site, since it's primarily used by men from wealthy western countries to meet women from poorer Asian ones. The website in the book is modeled on a real site, and I'm sure that a great number of women who use it are disappointed (or even abused) by the men they end up marrying. For Amina, the challenges of an American marriage had to be more subtle, since it's not usually very interesting to write fiction about someone who is simply a victim.

__GLAMOUR:__Has your perspective on the meaning of the family unit changed having studied its place in two diametrically contrasting cultures? Did you see many more similarities than you expected?

__NELL FREUDENBERGER:__I always see more similarities than I expect. I remember in college literary theory classes being warned about "essentialism"—or the temptation to imagine that people from all cultures shared some basic human perspective. In fact I think fiction is all about finding what we have in common, not necessarily socially or politically (although that may come naturally in the course of telling the story) but on an individual level. I always think of the feeling I have as a reader when I read a description of an emotion or sense impression I know I've experienced, but have never seen in print before. It's that connection between author and reader that makes reading so transporting, and it's what I strive to do when I write.

Advertisement

To be more concrete, I would say that the time I spent with this particular family gave me an appreciation for the benefits of living together as an extended family, as well as an awareness of the challenges inherent in that kind of household. I think it's easy to idealize a way of life when you're not practicing it yourself, so I had to be wary of falling into that trap while I was writing the book.

__GLAMOUR:__What's the most resonant lesson you've learned about yourself as both a woman and a writer throughout the research, writing, and publication of* The Newlyweds*?

__NELL FREUDENBERGER:__I had two children over the course of writing this book—part, though probably not all, of the reason it took so long. I suppose I learned viscerally something I've always been told, that it's different to be a working mother than it is to be a working father. I think I felt a certain kinship with Amina, who strives to please all of the people in her life, and finds not only that it's impossible--but that the desire to be a good girl, to get a gold star from the teacher, actually gets in the way of her happiness and the happiness of the people around her.

Dying to read The Newlyweds? No, I don't blame you, as a matter of fact. Snag it online here, or run to your local bookseller. It's definitely a book to take on a long trip this summer!